Two former Parramatta Eels players are accused of harbouring semi-automatic weapons and possessing more than half-a-million dollars in cash after dramatic arrests in Sydney's Centennial Park yesterday.

US, Russia and China ramp up pressure on North Korea with drills

The US military has staged bombing drills with South Korea over the Korean peninsula and Russia and China began naval exercises ahead of a UN General Assembly meeting where North Korea's nuclear threat is likely to loom large.

The flurry of military drills came after Pyongyang fired another mid-range ballistic missile over Japan on Friday and the reclusive North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3 in defiance of United Nations sanctions and other international pressure.

A pair of US B-1B bombers and four F-35 jets flew from Guam and Japan and joined four South Korean F-15K fighters in the latest drill, South Korea's defence ministry said.

The joint drills were being conducted "two to three times a month these days", Defence Minister Song Young-moo told a parliamentary hearing on Monday.

A Chinese warship is re-supplied before heading to the Baltic Sea for war games with Russia. (AFP)

Earlier on Monday, the official Xinhua news agency in Beijing said China and Russia began naval drills off the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok, not far from the Russia-North Korea border.

Those drills were being conducted between Peter the Great Bay, near Vladivostok, and the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, to the north of Japan, it said.

The drills are the second part of China-Russian naval exercises this year, the first part of which were staged in the Baltic in July. The Xinhua report did not directly link the drills to current tensions over North Korea.

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China and Russia have repeatedly called for a peaceful solution and talks to resolve the issue.

On Sunday, however, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the UN Security Council had run out of options on containing North Korea's nuclear program and the United States might have to turn the matter over to the Pentagon.

US President Donald Trump has vowed that North Korea will never be able to threaten the United States with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile.

Asked about Trump's warning last month that the North Korean threat to the United States would be met with "fire and fury", Haley said: "It was not an empty threat."